Microsoft Garage releases Outings travel discovery app
Microsoft Garage released Outings a new travel discovery application for Google Android and Apple iOS devices recently.
Outings: Discover Beautiful Places serves two main purposes: first, as a travel discovery app to explore destinations, and second, as a companion app when you are traveling to get suggestions on what to do or visit at a specific location you are visiting.
You can use the application as a guest, or sign in with a Facebook or Google account to save stories and places. It is interesting that Outings does not support Microsoft Accounts at this time.
The application asks you to pick topics that you are interested in on first run. Topics include "night sky", "landscapes", "history and culture", or "caves", and you are asked to pick at least five, but can pick all of them if you like.
Outings uses these topics as the base for suggestions that it presents to you when you run the app.
The app's frontpage displays the three entry points discover, nearby, and browse that you may switch between.
Discover lists sights based on the topics you selected. The app focuses on the United States, Canada and Mexico right now, but will highlight sights from all over those countries based on the topics that you selected.
It displays one place at a time featuring a stock image, a short title and description, and a link to a website that offers additional information. The app indicates if multiple images are available with an icon. You can tap on it to browse the available photos.
If you are signed in, you can save the place, flag it as "been there". A tap on the page displays a map view, and other places or stories in the vicinity.
Nearby concentrates on a 50 mile or 200 mile radius around your location. If you are not in the US, Mexico or Canada, you may not get results right now. If you are, you get suggestions based on the topics that you selected during setup.
Note that you can manage topics in the application preferences at any time to add or remove some. A minimum of 5 topics is required thogh.
Browse finally lets you search by topic or destination. Again, this works only for places in North America, and the app matches what you type automatically with suggestions. You can type a place, e.g. Mexico City or New York, or a topic such as recreation or water activity.
Closing Words
Outings is a travel discovery application at its core. While you do get suggestions if you select the nearby option or type a location under browse, its main focus seems to be to show you places all across certain countries based on topics that interest you.
This is a stark contrast to Google Trips which focuses on places that you plan to visit in the near future. While you may use Google Trips for discovery purposes as well, it is not the application's main purpose.
Martin, I would appreciate that you do not censor this post, as it’s informative writing.
Onur, there is a misleading statement “[…] GIFs are animated images …”. No, obviously you don’t seem to have take much notice of what you were told back in March regarding; Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).
For example, https://www.ghacks.net/2023/03/31/whats-gif-explanation-and-how-to-use-it/#comment-4562919 (if you had read my replies within that thread, you might have learnt something useful). I even mentioned, “GIF intrinsically supports animated images (GIF89a)”.
You linked to said article, [Related: …] within this article, but have somehow failed to take onboard what support you were given by several more knowledgeable people.
If you used AI to help write this article, it has failed miserably.
EMRE ÇITAK posts are useless because they are fraught with inaccuracies and are irrelevant.
AI is stupid, and it will not get any better if we really know how this all works. Prove me wrong.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IYl1sTIOHI
Martin, [#comment-4569908] is only meant to be in: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/09/how-to-send-gifs-on-iphone-two-different-ways/]. Whereas it appears duplicated in several recent random low-quality non relevant articles.
Obviously it [#comment-4569908] was posted: 9 July 2023. Long before this thread even existed… your database is falling over. Those comments are supposed to have unique ID values. It shouldn’t be possible to duplicate the post ID, if the database had referential integrity.
Don’t tell me!
Ghacks wants the state to step in for STATE-MANDATED associations to save jobs!!!
Bring in the dictatorship!!!
And screw Rreedom of Association – too radical for Ghacks maybe
GateKeeper ?
That’s called “appointing” businesses to do the state’s dirty work!!!!!
But the article says itself that those appointed were not happy – implying they had not choice!!!!!!
Rreedom of Association is one of our most important rights. Some people think it’s Freedom, but no, I say Rreedom is far more important. There are many STATE-MANDATED associations that save jobs, that’s right MANDATED. I can’t name any of them, but rest assured they are bad, because saving jobs are bad, and people having jobs leads to dictatorship!!! Anyone who disagrees is too radical for Ghacks maybe, because I’m not sure.
@The Dark Lady,
@KeZa,
@Database failure,
@Howard Pearce,
@Howard Allan Pearce,
Note: I replaced the quoted URI scheme: https:// with “>>” and posted.
The current ghacks.net is owned by “Softonic International S.A.” (sold by Martin in October 2019), and due to the fate of M&A, ghacks.net has changed in quality.
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/02/microsoft-is-removing-wordpad-from-windows/#comment-4573130
Many Authors of bloggers and advertisers certified by Softonic have joined the site, and the site is full of articles aimed at advertising and clickbait.
>> ghacks.net/2023/08/31/in-windows-11-the-line-between-legitimate-and-adware-becomes-increasingly-blurred/#comment-4573117
As it stands, except for articles by Martin Brinkmann, Mike Turcotte, and Ashwin, they are low quality, unhelpful, and even vicious. It is better not to read those articles.
How to display only articles by a specific author:
Added line to My filters in uBlock Origin: ghacks.net##.hentry,.home-posts,.home-category-post:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Mike Turcotte|Ashwin/))
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/01/windows-11-development-overview-of-the-august-2023-changes/#comment-4573033
By the way, if you use an RSS reader, you can track exactly where your comments are (I’m an iPad user, so I use “Feedly Classic”, but for Windows I prefer the desktop app “RSS Guard”).
RSS Guard: Feed reader which supports RSS/ATOM/JSON and many web-based feed services.
>> github.com/martinrotter/rssguard#readme
We all live in digital surveillance glass houses under scrutiny of evil people because of people like Musk. It’s only fair that he takes his turn.
“Operating systems will be required to let the user choose the browser, virtual assistant and search engine of their choice. Microsoft cannot force users to use Bing or Edge. Apple will have to open up its iOS operating system to allow third-party app stores, aka allow sideloading of apps. Google, on the other hand, will need to provide users with the ability to uninstall preloaded apps (bloatware) from Android devices. Online services will need to allow users to unsubscribe from their platform easily. Gatekeepers need to provide interoperability with third-parties that offer similar services.”
Wonderful ! Let’s hope they’ll comply with that law more than they are doing with the GDPR.
No, they didn’t lmao.
https://twitter.com/vxunderground/status/1706523877478670542
What does this article about Musk/Tesla have to do with computing, devices, phones?
More irelevant filler.
yeah sure… they are always the victims and it is only against them ????
Believe them 100% and never question anything. This lawsuit sounds like the type you heard when people were eating batteries.